1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a user interface conversion system and method capable of supporting various devices, and more particularly, to a user interface conversion system and method capable of supporting various devices wherein an integrated user interface is generated based on neutral user interfaces residing on the home network and converted into a specific user interface such that the integrated user interface can be supported in a client. This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2003-0005568, filed on Jan. 28, 2003, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a home network is configured using Internet Protocol (hereinafter referred to as “IP”) based private networks. Thus, various kinds of equipment used in a home, including all types of personal computers (PCs), intelligent appliances and wireless devices, are connected to one another and controlled through a single network.
A proposed home network system is configured in such a manner that a common virtual computing environment called middleware is established at the equipment residing in the private network and applications are provided on the computing environment. The middleware allows various kinds of equipment to communicate with one another in the home network. The currently available middleware includes home AV interoperability (HAVi), universal plug and play (UPnP), Jini, home wide web (HWW), and the like.
Various kinds of equipment residing on the home network are connected to one another in a peer-to-peer fashion through a home network middleware. The respective equipment uses IP addresses that are assigned by a dynamic host configuration protocol (hereinafter, “DHCP”) server or selected by an auto IP function.
That is, when the respective equipment is first connected to the home network, it searches for the DHCP server in order to obtain the address assigned in accordance with a response of the DHCP server or automatically selects the IP address within a certain range using the auto IP function in a case of a network in which the DHCP server does not operate.
The equipment by which the IP address assigned by the DHCP server or selected by the auto IP function is used can communicate with other equipment on the network using TCP/IP and perform searches and queries for the other equipment on the network via the respective IP addresses.
The home network middleware such as the UPnP uses the protocol such as sampling stochastic dynamic programming (hereinafter, “SSDP”) in order to search desired equipment in the home network. Further, in order to control the operation of the searched equipment, a web-based method is used in which a simple object access protocol (hereinafter, “SOAP”) is used to call a relevant control device or a control message is transmitted through a presentation web page.
FIG. 3 illustrates an operation control process of accessing the UPnP control device residing in the conventional home network.
As shown in FIG. 3, a UPnP control point 30 searches for control devices such as the control device 20 for controlling various kinds of equipment on the UPnP home network (hereinafter, “UPnP CD”) using the SSDP and controls the UPnP CD 20 through a SOAP request using device information on the searched UPnP CD 20 obtained from the search of the UPnP CDs 20 using the SSDP. That is, the UPnP control point 30 controls the equipment by calling the UPnP CD 20.
Alternatively, the UPnP control point 30 accesses a relevant control web page of the UPnP CD 20 through a web browser 10 using current uniform resource locator (URL) information corresponding to the control web page of the searched UPnP CD 20 obtained from the search of the UPnP CDs 20 using the SSDP. Then, the control point transmits an HTTP request corresponding to a control message for controlling specific equipment through the control web page provided on the web browser 10 to the UPnP CD 20, and thus, confirms processing results for the HTTP request in the UPnP CD 20. That is, if a user has access to the control web page of the UPnP CD 20 through the web browser 10 and selects a desired control message, an HTTP request message corresponding to the selected control message is transmitted to the UPnP CD 20. Then, the process for the HTTP request is performed at the UPnP CD 20 and its resultant response is received by the user.
However, there is a problem in that devices such as mobile phones or PDAs, which recently gained wide public exposure but have limited computer performance and UI display capability, have difficulty in properly executing the web browser or displaying the HTML pages as they are.
Further, there is another problem in that the devices on the home network cannot be controlled in a case where the protocols supporting the middleware are not compatible with one another even though the middleware should be used for searching and controlling the device operating on the home network.